TrialX America Walks Study App Privacy Policy
Last Updated: Feb 18, 2016
- Introduction. TrialX Inc. (hereby referred to as TX) develops, operates and maintains a mobile App called “America Walks” for the purposes of conducting a study under its TrialX Research Division to assess the walking behavior of individuals . TX is committed to ensuring the privacy of its App users and this Privacy policy describes the efforts taken by TX to maintain and safeguard your privacy.
- Ethics Review. America Walks Study has been independently reviewed by Western IRB. The entire study protocol, the consent document, advertising materials, Principal investigator bio has been reviewed and approved by WIRB. The WIRB protocol approval number is 20152782
- Collection of Personal Data. While using the App, you will be asked to answer a demographic survey and provide your name and email address to provide consent to participate in the study. The study will also collected your step counts as recorded on your device via Apple’s Healthkit. The step count data will be obtained from the device only upon your permission for the last 30 days from the date you provide consent to participate and for next 30 days or till you withdraw from the study.
- Usage of Data Collected. The data collected will be used to display the step counts of all participants in the study on a map. Additional details will be provided for each demographic category in a graph view. This will allow you to see how your steps compare to others in your state/city and demographic category. Data will also be used to show a leaderboard displaying a ranking of states based on average daily steps walked by participants in that state and your ranking in your state and nationally. Additional aggregate metrics will be displayed on the study website. An in-depth analysis will be conducted to report findings in any academic publications and conferences. No personally identifiable information will be displayed publicly.
- Privacy. Any questionnaire and step count data collected as part of the study will be considered confidential and data will be encrypted to try to keep it secure. The data will only be analyzed by authorized individuals and any results of the study will not reveal any personally identifiable information. The information may also be provided to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) if deemed necessary by the agency. Absolute confidentiality cannot be guaranteed because of the need to give information to these parties. The results of this research study may be presented at meetings or in publications. Your identity will not be disclosed in those presentations.
Any identifiable data thus collected will not be publicly released and will be safeguarded using HIPAA mandated best practice - Security and Confidentiality of Data. We take all the necessary steps to keep your data safe and secure. With respect to that commitment, user/site usage and other data are stored in a highly secure and reliable manner. TX takes all required precaution to protect our users’ information. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job are granted access to personally identifiable information. We secure all data exchanges and Internet communications with a secure server, using secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption and digital certificates. All TX’s employees and agents with access to databases have signed confidentiality agreements, which forbids any use of the data beyond supporting AI’s working needs. Critical account access information (passwords, secret questions/answers) is encrypted in the database so they will be indecipherable to those who are able to access the database. We will never ask you for your password or secret question/answer, and you should inform us if anyone has attempted to obtain this information from you.
- Notification of Changes. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post changes on the TrialX website under the ‘Privacy’ page so that our users are aware of the information we collect, the ways we use it, and any circumstances under which we disclose it. If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify users by way of email. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we can use their information in this different manner. We will use information in accordance with the privacy policy under which the information was collected.